


breathless mouths may summon

by gogollescent



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault, Fate/Zero
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waver has a conspicuously Renault-canon-consistent dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathless mouths may summon

In the dream he’s gone mad. There’s a body on the bed, and he’s lying on top of it, clawing at its clothes. In the back of his mind Waver Velvet notes that the dead man was handsome—handsome like legacy students at the Clocktower somehow always seem to be: straight scripted features and a slightly open mouth, as though the corpse has an insult in mind, and hasn’t decided yet whether to waste it on small fry.

The comparison doesn’t make it any farther under the onslaught of alien grief. Even Waver’s senses are not his own; the reds and bronzes of the wall hangings blur and flame up under dry eyes, stronger, deeper, than any color he’s touched while waking—not that he spends so much time on mere _vision_ , immersed as he’s been since childhood in theory and pipe dreams.

He leans up and kisses the body. Self-contempt, at least, is a familiar chaperone, taking his sticky hand in the dark; but that too feels altered by this second consciousness. Someone is watching him from the core of their white-hot rage.

_Who are you? How can one such as you have come here, bearing your tiny troubles and poor lusts?_

As though you can talk, you complete necrophiliac! Waver shoots back, unreasonably stung.

There’s no answer. The sleeting torrent of brain-pain reforms, more forceful for the slight interruption. Waver skims his open mouth across the eyes, the cheek, dry stiffened lips, his mind absorbed in the intelligent artistry of the king of conquerors—a shining thing, even twisted, even when his gut rebels at what Iskandar wants to rule. He knows, of course, what the other really meant—about lust. Petty material: a wish to be seen. The image comes to him of a dragon brooding on its treasure; and then, crushingly, a magpie among wires. He never would have fantasized about raising the dead.

He picks up the handsome head and buries his face in its hair. There are people all around him, he realizes, ashamed. The room is dark, but he can see how afraid they are. To distract himself, he shifts his attention to the side table, with its silver ewer like a half moon; the wall-hangings, where a yellow archer shoots and kills a charging stag. Unwillingly, he breathes in to learn—the washed coarse texture, human scent, of these (still-warm) long chestnut locks.

…

Time goes and returns like a lover, in dreams, trailing other men’s perfume.

That is absolutely not how he or any reasonable person would have said that. He can see, however, now that it’s been put to him in those terms, the ways and rounds by which it’s true.

They bring him back to his rooms. Finally people are speaking; anxious voices, loud in praise of Hephaistion. “Liars,” he says. “You envied and hated him. Go. Leave me.”

There is someone left. A boy, Waver’s age, impossibly small from what Waver is realizing is an impossible height. He looks like the kind of girl Waver has occasionally cast in the ongoing narrative of what life could be like after the Grail. So not like anyone he’s ever met or interacted with, in other words, pretty or plain-faced, sharp-tongued or direct; but rather like the girls on magazine covers, with their smoke-curly hair and legs long as white somethings—girls whom Waver regards with a mixture of resentment and surprised interest. Really? This is beautiful? All along, this has been beautiful? It’s completely meaningless, but the question nags at him. Not that much, not at seventeen and most intent on his teacher’s recognition—but—he can see the appeal, he understands what they’re doing, and yet, if _this_ is all—

The lens turns. This is Bagoas. He is your beloved. He has emerged from who knows where, covered in the scratches of thorns.

"You grieved for him."

Silence, within and without.

"You fetched him when Bucephalus died," Waver says. "You honored him when he saved you from the desert. _You_ never desired his death.”

Even before he spits the words he knows that they’re all wrong. How can Iskandar not catch it? There is a look in Bagoas’s dark eye of newfound terror; also defiance, astonishment, love. That carven face: that flush, creeping in at the ear-tips. Here is a man who cannot believe his good fortune, and flinches from it as he holds out his fist. Waver knows he’s falling for the stupid precepts of the dream, but he also knows—if there’s anything he knows—envy, real envy, and hatred in the moment it’s extinguished by guilt. Why shouldn’t he? His teacher died.

"Al’skander, he was the best of men," Bagoas begins, and Waver thinks, _you stupid ox-headed king, that’s pure relief! Think about it. He’s alive! Your friend is dead!_

But Iskandar is listening. The words crash down like waves. Waver can feel the ocean, warm on his invaded soul.


End file.
